Microsoft Shares Licensing Updates at Microsoft Hosting Summit

Today at the
Microsoft Hosting summit, we announced license
mobility, to offer customers the flexibility to deploy application
servers on-premises or hosted by Service Providers in the cloud.

Effective on
July 1, 2011, this will give customers the ability to deploy their
application server licenses covered by Software Assurance (SA), to a hosted
environment on shared hardware without any additional licensing costs.

The
retirement of Outsourcer SKUs for Windows Server, as well as removal of
workload restrictions on the non-outsourcing SKUs. This means a lower single
price offering across all Service Provider workloads. The change also increases
platform manageability by eliminating ambiguous licensing terms and improving
licensing consistency across Microsoft products.

The introduction of a new Core Infrastructure
Suite in the Microsoft Services Provider License Agreement program (SPLA ) that
will make licensing the infrastructure at the Service Provider's datacenter
more affordable. This suite will include Windows Server Datacenter, System
Center Server Management Suite Datacenter (SMSD) and Forefront Endpoint
Protection.

The reduction in the pricing for certain
Subscriber Access Licenses for Software Assurance ("SALs for SA") that will
make shared application hosting more affordable for customers with active
Software Assurance.